A day after Sen. John McCain urged his Senate colleagues to reject Gina Haspel as CIA director because she had overseen torture of detainees, a White House official reportedly mocked the ailing Arizona Republican, saying his opinion "doesn't matter" because "he's dying anyway."

The Hill first reported the comment later confirmed by The Associated Press. Both cited unnamed individuals in the room when the disparaging remark was made by Kelly Sadler, a special assistant to the president.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders declined to say Friday whether Sadler made the statement: "I'm not going to comment on an internal staff meeting." She confirmed that Sadler still works at the White House.

McCain, 81, who has incurable brain cancer, issued a statement on Wednesday calling Haspel's role in torture "disturbing" and "disqualifying" for the top CIA job.

On Thursday, Cindy McCain tweeted at Sadler: "May I remind you my husband has a family, 7 children and 5 grandchildren."

And on Friday, his daughter Meghan McCain, one of the hosts of daytime talk show The View, responded to Sadler on the program, saying, "Don't feel bad for me or my family."

The White House did not dispute the remark attributed to Sadler but said in a statement, "We respect Senator McCain's service to our nation and he and his family are in our prayers during this difficult time."

The reported remark by Sadler, a former opinion writer for the conservative Washington Times, came on the same day that a retired three-star general told Fox Business Network that the torture McCain endured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam "worked."

"[It] worked on John [McCain]," retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney told Charles Payne of Fox Business Network on Thursday.

"That's why they call him 'Songbird John,' " he said.

The claim that McCain — who was imprisoned in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" after his Navy A-4 was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 — had collaborated with his captors has received a "pants on fire" rating from PolitiFact.

PolitiFact, in a report from 2008, said there was "scant evidence to back up the claim and it is strongly contradicted by many other accounts ... [including] interviews with other POWs, an author who has written a McCain biography and the senator's own accounts."

The comment by McInerney — who has been a proponent of the debunked claim that President Obama was born in Kenya and once suggested that Islamist sleeper agents might be embedded in the Obama White House — went unchallenged on-air by Payne.

The host later apologized for the oversight, saying on Twitter that he "had the control room in my ear telling me to wrap the segment, and did not hear the comment."

"As a proud military veteran and son of a Vietnam Vet these words neither reflect my or the network's feelings about Senator McCain, or his remarkable service and sacrifice to this country," Payne tweeted.

During the presidential campaign in 2015, then-candidate Trump — who received multiple academic and medical deferments to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War — said McCain was only considered a war hero "because he was captured," adding "I like people who weren't captured."

When you have a completely odious man at the top, without a sing shred of Human decency, courage or achievement, his attitudes flow downhill...history and Human Nature shows what occurs repeatedly.
:/

Ppatty
it's bad enough for a COWARD to dismiss and impugn a man who served his country bravely
even if I strongly object to what McCain has done in politics in last few decades, this abusive, gutless crap against him is obscene.
And it's a sight fucking worse to accuse McCain of betraying his comrades, but it's nothing we shouldn't expect of the Shit Gibbon and his Cadre of Calamitous Cuntoids!

I wouldn't mind if Trump had protested and evaded the draft or protested seriously against it as that takes courage and a morale stance, but he just evaded risking his yellow-spined ass as he cares nothing for anyone or anything.

Hell mend every dumb or selfish fuckwit that voted for that prick, but the rest of the country, and the world, doesn't deserve the harm and threat of his existence in the Whitehouse :/

America's international relations drop into the "septic tank" level.....

Saw an interesting exchange on MSNBC last night - forget who the talking heads were - they said the aide that made the statement wanted to make a public apology, and even told Megan McCain that she would, but so far she hasn't. The theory is that Trump told the Chief of Staff to forbid her from making a public apology, and if you think about it, that makes sense. Nobody from this administration has publicly apologized for *anything* that I recall, at least until after they resigned/were fired.

In order to renew my CPA license every year, I have to take 2 hours of ethics training. So many of those courses talk about the "tone at the top" and how the ethics of the top administration set how the entire organization functions. Never thought I'd see such an obvious example in our government. So much corruption, lying and just general assholishness at all levels of the Trump administration - they are certainly following their leader's example.

Saw an interesting exchange on MSNBC last night - forget who the talking heads were - they said the aide that made the statement wanted to make a public apology, and even told Megan McCain that she would, but so far she hasn't. The theory is that Trump told the Chief of Staff to forbid her from making a public apology, and if you think about it, that makes sense. Nobody from this administration has publicly apologized for *anything* that I recall, at least until after they resigned/were fired.

In order to renew my CPA license every year, I have to take 2 hours of ethics training. So many of those courses talk about the "tone at the top" and how the ethics of the top administration set how the entire organization functions. Never thought I'd see such an obvious example in our government. So much corruption, lying and just general assholishness at all levels of the Trump administration - they are certainly following their leader's example.

classic symptoms of extremely bad leadership. the kind that like, oh, starts pogroms, world wars etc
not necessarily because they intend to do rampant evil to begin with, but, they simply WON'T think, or care....and so, it spirals

throughout history, whether small or large scale, this kind of crap always sets up a cycle that eats the heart right out of things.
always spirals out of control and you hope, either burns itself out quick, or someone rises up and fights back hard and dirty
cause if they don't...
oy vay

personally, I believe in the existence of spiritual evil...but I also believe it largely comes from "psychological" evil (consciousness, and acts there of have greater weight than what we see, and mind creates spirit)
anyway, whether it be psychological and/or spiritual, it kind of acts like an infection or miasma, if you do not counteract it HARD, well...it will just snowball.
again, look at history

the country that gave the world Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and others...now gives us this....excrement that walks

I ponder if kids in 2218 will be playing games like "Total Trump...take back America form the Evil Scrote Beast and his Neo-Nazi followers"